Freelance Journalist | Avid Gamer

PAX 2013: Even The Ocean preview

From the developers that brought you Anodyne (Jonathan Kittaka and Sean Hogan), comes a new platformer that I think may have some legs. I played, Even The Ocean in a pretty bare bones state yesterday at the Indie Mega Booth, but the concepts that Hogan briefed me on were enough to get me excited about its eventual release.

The core gameplay elements that I saw while playing the game involved locking the direction that my avatar was holding their shield while I wall jumped and traversed floating platforms. Although, I found that blocking the incoming projectiles from wall and floor-mounted turrets wasn’t the best way to navigate the twilight-veiled world.

Instead of a health meter, Even The Ocean uses a light vs. dark meter on the bottom of the screen that must be balanced in order to stay alive. Getting hit by light projectiles skews the bar to the light side, and getting hit by dark projectiles skews it to the dark.

Rather than shielding the beams like I would in other games, I found it more interesting to periodically throw myself into harms way in order to balance my meter.

Hogan isn’t revealing much about the story so far, but he saidthat the game os going involve navigating the dreams of the protagonist, which is also how he explains the light/dark/mechanic.

Hogan said he’s hoping to finish it within a year, and it’s a small indie game that should offer another interesting option for platformer fans.